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RIVER RIPE For Linda Hogan, for Ai I swim in a river ripe, a ringlet wheel though It is a bad place after hours. Wild, unpredictable, yanked around. I fell sleepy to traffic sounds, warm pangs for a car, not a river. Like a barn sparrow after cream, not a bud. To dream of not a wheel, but a chain Dragging me out of the river. ICONOGRAPHY: FASHION IN THE MILLENNIAL IMAGINATION What kind of luck dangles from a chain? Angels and four-leaf clovers, crosses, found coins. A gold-patina prophet is $3 from SHEIN, and mass is held at the Met, and who is the martyr now? Me or you? Isn’t it holy to find yourself divine? To see your likeness in the heavens, where everything is eternity and so soft — lit with a camera flash, fluffy filter strobes, and a film that softens me to you. Was this chapel saved by donations dropped in a clear Lucite box? Candles lit for a dollar a piece, long matches. If mercy is a merchant, then I am not without fountains, offerings, saints or symbols to purchase or ancient superstitions, brooms and beads to inherit. What fortune grows in a garden? Lavender, red roses, mint, maybe. Where is grace found there, or is the luck in these long acrylics, magic in my fingertips? I choose nude, now and forever. And the only garden I know now is lucky desktop bamboo, leaves tickling my screen. Where is the water in little dishes? Or golden kittens, waving me hello from a salon’s tiny temple. We are golden kittens without milk, orange peels and no monkeys, chickens without heads, temple steps and no traffic, birds with no eaves to build within. No harvest to burn, without smoke or grace or snakes crackling, chanting, chirping prayers. What comes of mass, messages, or missed trains when I have no ticket to buy. Jessica Willingham is a Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project graduate and editor at Five South. She lives and writes in Oklahoma.

Aurelia was explaining problem sets to three undergraduates who sat in the Teaching Assistants’ office. It was the same three who’d come before the last quiz. Their scores had improved by an average of five points each, and they had returned, hoping to continue the trend.  “So in a Boolean model, this would be ...” Aurelia began. “True!” they cried. “Yes!” Aurelia was energized by their responsiveness. Not only were they listening to her, but they were processing what she said.  “And in this instance – ” Aurelia continued, but the rest of her words were engulfed by a crash as the half-open door swung into the beige corridor, and one of her twelve office mates, whom she had dubbed Angry Pit Bull, barged in. The students’ heads swivelled toward her, taking in the bulky sweater and book bag, along with the glare over square glasses with dark rims.  Aurelia cleared her throat, “In this instance ...” she paused. The three students turned toward her. “Which instance?” asked one, lost. Aurelia felt so heated that she was sure steam poured out of her ears.  “Why are you here?” demanded Angry Pit Bull. “These are my office hours.” Aurelia steadied her voice as much as possible.  “No, they’re mine!” Angry Pit Bull slammed a cup of water she had been drinking on the table near the door. Water sloshed onto the undergraduates’ bags piled near the table’s legs. One student jumped up out of concern for his papers, which were peeping out from his satchel, and he found in dismay that droplets had fallen on them. “Oh – oh!” He wailed. Holding them up. “I need to dry these,” he said, looking lamely at Aurelia. Angry Pit Bull stood by, unmoved. “There’s a washroom down the corridor,” said another student, and they turned toward the door.  Angry Pit Bull said nothing. No apology. No acknowledgement. Crushed, Aurelia watched as her students struggled with their wet items.  “Here, let me – ” she picked up a wet computer tablet, attempting to dry it with a single tissue. It dissolved in the rivulets of water coursing over it. She hurried down the corridor to find paper towels in the washroom. When she returned to the office, Angry Pit Bull had moved Aurelia’s belongings to a side table near the door.  “What are you doing? Don’t touch my things!” Aurelia was incensed. Other than her student’s wet computer tablet, she had never handled anyone else’s belongings in the office. Besides, her bag contained vials of an extremely acidic substance from the lab where she worked that could result in acute illness or even –  “I need to be here for my office hours.” “There are three desks in this room. And you interrupted me, my students, and my office hours!” “These are my  office hours!” They eyed each other like boxers in a ring. “No one is here to see you, ” Aurelia flung at her. Angry Pit Bull seethed at this jab against her popularity. “My office hours begin at 1 p.m. and end at 2 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays. I signed up on the front door!” Aurelia distinctly remembered signing up for those hours to make room for her lab work, which was part of her natural science degree. As a double-major, she needed to juggle her schedule like a unicyclist on a tightrope. “My office hours begin at 1:30 p.m. on Thursdays,” growled Angry Pit Bull, “to accommodate my weekly lecture.” “What lecture?” Aurelia challenged. “A lecture on the significance of sandals during the Later Roman Empire!” Sandals, indeed. Aurelia marched to the outside of the front door, which had a piece of paper tacked onto it. The paper had columns labelled Monday through Friday, with horizontal lines underneath them, demarcating half-hour increments of the day. She had written her name underneath the 1 p.m. line of the Tuesday and Thursday columns, and had drawn an arrow extending from the 1 to 2 p.m. line, using a pen that swung from the door. It had no cap, and its ink was drying out. Aurelia remembered pressing it into the paper, and there was even a nick on the Thursday column, toward the end of the hour, where she’d eked out a faint arrow head. She looked in horror at a line pencilled over half of her Thursday slot, beginning at 1:30 p.m.. “You drew over my slot!” Aurelia cried. Angry Pit Bull thudded over. “There’s no pen mark there. Mine’s in pencil,” she said, taking a pencil out of her sweater pocket, and darkening the line she had drawn. Furious, Aurelia went back into the office to wait for more students during office hours that were surely hers. As she made her way to her seat, she saw the paper cup of water left there by Angry Pit Bull. Her eyes travelled to her bag, stuffed with the books and papers necessary for her long day. Some lab equipment bulged under its zippered top, stretching the seam. Seized with an idea, she unzipped her bag, a vial almost tumbling out. She snatched it up, opened its lid, and tapped its contents into Angry Pit Bull’s water. There was a slight fizz from the acidic substance. The door to the office swung wider, and Aurelia froze. What would happen now that she’d been caught? She braced herself for Angry Pit Bull’s rage, but only saw the wall on the other side of the corridor. Stubby fingers appeared around the side of the door, becoming paler as they braced it against something – apparently the pencil that was in Angry Pit Bull’s other hand, crushing its lead into the timetable on the door while thickening the line she had drawn.  Angry Pit Bull then appeared in the doorway, her face resolved into smugness that enraged Aurelia to her core. “It’s my turn now.” Aurelia’s eyes went to the clock on the wall, then drifted to the water on the table, which had settled into its clear, insipid state.  “That’s mine,” said Angry Pit Bull, picking up the cup, taking a couple of gulps, and grimacing as its contents coursed down her throat. Aurelia stared. “Ok.” She picked up her bags and hastily departed. Erica W. Weems writes technical documents, miscellaneous articles, and fiction. She is also on staff at a theatre. She volunteers at a museum, enjoys dancing and explores botanic gardens. Her fiction has appeared in BlazeVOX, abducted cow, Superpresent , and  The Razor .

how does it look, from a distance as i flail at this nuisance of mosquitos from my car to the clinic, as they wave me on at the front desk to the jungle room you see, they know me here but this ain’t graceland there’s pictures of monkeys and macaws a plastic palm tree, canned-in 80s pop anthems in spite of, not having the time of my life still i shuffle across vinyl tile, inspecting cabinets plenty of bandages, rubber gloves peeping the rubbish bin when dirty dancing fades to dancing in the dark and like a boss i’m at the mirror, checking my look comparing faces with the pain scale poster looking a four, but hey baby feeling an eight a quick knock,  the door swings wide our nurse, brandishing a spectrum of colored vials in mid-conversation, i’m catching the tail-end she’s hissing at some barbara  behind her something about date night when wham starts in carelessly whispering nurse lowers her voice babs has a thing for boxers even lower third one this year takes out a tourniquet wraps it tight, says  just a lil pinch a whiff of isopropyl somewhere an ambulance wails i say to myself, right it’s just polka dots only jellyfish floating in the air, on the walls lost in a saxophone riff, i’m several bars deep before the stinging slap, a crimson rorschach she says whoa sir please steady on stay with me  sir you were fading  on me oh, surely i reply why not partake of ankles, elbows why not indulge a little longer J. R. Wilkerson is a DC-area poet by way of the Ozarks. His scribblins have been featured in Roi Fainéant Press, Voidspace, Memezine, The Broken Spine, dadakuku, and elsewhere.

lava everything spins in the squid ink  having meant a caress      swimming now downward with blinded eyes  once I slowed a loved one’s ascent toward air      once I tripped another who scraped her knees      these were breaches      with a long pole from two decades out  I might call them cruelties      and continue shrinking  from apologies  that present themselves for inspection as landslides  resentful of consequence      held tight through a titan’s eon—       lava splits earth irrepeatably each rift is exceptional  while what issues forth     is not      the aftermath impacts a bell curve      peaked with heedlessness ending in a dreary refusal  and beginning  with a not-so-consensual yes after being at the heart          of an earthquake I ask myself if things are shaking      and I cannot be sure     a woodpile  settles lower     spilling into damp grass      our retaining walls aren’t ready      cascade failures unroll endlessly     if you count the echoes     ripples  in water picked up by wind     implicated  in urgent violation of permanence      shake while present     then dim below  tentative flickers     I ask you  are things shaking     or were things  shaking moments ago     and again  things are not shaking and they weren’t  shaking moments ago     a flat stone  sways side to side     sinking     as a river  inaudibly rises     boundaries that should be  mason tough     convulse to smithereens      are we mad at each other     I’m trying  not to be on guard be patient  the water flowing from our spring was contaminated so we caught what the sky offered    she was a windblown shallow patch of south pacific sea      cold layers of tropical blue      a false berry that rural children know not to eat    I was a small kauri in full shade      outliving more ambitious trees when the drought came or the storms  but not growing I swept the sand her feet brought home      but not if she was looking  not when she’d feel accused    barrels full of gore lighting fires indoors     making sure they breathe     relighting smoke stale logs     letting ash loose     we chose a brittle bridge to walk across     a rotting log astride a rivulet     a deadened drying beetle’s back   |   music shifts     and the room goes rueful       wrestling past shackles      keys lost in beach sand     scorning consolations     soothing recast as stockades     sullied with kitchen scraps   |   flood waters chomp fine roads like a cookie   |   a lazy hand’s soft weight snaps boughs free     pilfered from within     now we’re rubbing fragments from our eyes   |   I want to       want to     be someone who     if smashed by a truck       would be barrels full of gore     drenching storefronts     maybe a bin of tennis balls     instantly everywhere undamaged     not just moth dust     odorless and already gone   |   decades can knock you out     cold     just slipping by on schedule     that moment you poke a burning log     and with ceramic sound     it becomes a uniform profusion     of murderous briquettes illness and receiving care bone broth vapor overlays an outdoors  crisp with oxygen     grease blankets  settle     bogged with eye ache     banks  burst by the salty raw     carry clutter  towards downpour-wounded valves  an oven opens and cake falls     puddle  fever or rock fever     false rest of being  inwardly ridden     one horse collapsing  after another     none of them rising the earth below you     downhill of you  is slipping     the sea is rising     the water  warm and frothy     bread kept soft  in thick towels     comes with new candles  care swaps bandages before they sour I try to earn my keep     with laughter  and warnings ill-prepared yet formidable hard lives join hands     round randomness      the secular idol who     owes no explanation      for smudging smaller lives     out    a stacked deck     demands too much from us      spawns a horde     of not just moments but  overburdened ones     that ruin whole afternoons      that send us bustling    to the cannery where  we have attempted     to preserve good things    things we have sorted     into two categories      what fell into our lap     and all other things    compulsion devotion     same coin no chasm     we set our coin in lacquer     danger side down    maybe there were bullets     but we never  caught them     or the guns hung from people  we could relate to     adversaries swarm closer      trusting us not to shoot     wagering our frenzy      our disarray    isn’t sham and won’t coalesce  into targeted hostile beams Nathaniel Calhoun works on biodiversity, board governance and systems change. His projects focus mostly on the Amazon basin or Aotearoa New Zealand. His poems have featured or will soon feature in the London Magazine, the Iowa Review, Oxford Poetry, Diagram, Landfall and many others. He sometimes tweets @calhounpoems

She is doing the Subathon. Only a little cleavage when the timer gets low. And if that donator asks for those pictures, she shares them just for him. But the timer is getting low very often now. The V-necks become deep V cuts. The push-up bra, already doubled. She hates the ones who watch. Not earlier, when she played video games instead of staring at a camera, watching videos on YouTube she actually liked, instead of following her community. Growing dumber by the year, she thinks. Car crashes and bikinis and cursed meme compilations. She hates them all. The timer is getting low. The rent is almost due. The jobs never pay as well. She’s looked, more than once. You can make $500 in five seconds here and $500 in a week there. So what if the camera has been on for several weeks now. So what if the sexualization is becoming more blatant. It’s still better than that. Here, at least, she’s worshipped. Here, at least, she calls the shots. Always that other door, calling. What could actually make her wealthy beyond her wildest dreams. A very small thing, really. No videos, just tasteful, giving them what they want. Charging them for what they want, but directly. A small thing, and as the timer hits zero, she makes her decision. In fact, she had been taking pictures for some time now. Accumulating a backlog while her body looks like this. While they still care about it. The womb, a flat tummy; the chest erect. When she announces it, the community splits. Half love her for it. She makes $10,000 in ten minutes. The other half calls her a whore. They say they always knew she was that way. They say it was only a matter of time. For the most part, she ignores them. The money is still good. But then, the next week, she only makes $2,000 on a set, even more risqué. No matter—plenty to pay her rent with. Years pass. $2,000 becomes $200 becomes $20. There are other women now, playing video games, whom they watch instead. She doesn’t even stream anymore. Just posts the videos. Doesn’t talk to family anymore. Can’t. Doesn’t look for jobs anymore. Can’t. And she asks herself when that happened. It wasn’t so long ago that her mother suggested she stream, as a way to make some extra money. She was always playing those games, anyway. Always alone on the computer. And there was a time when she could convince herself that it would last. That she could make the small sacrifices without making the big ones. But there were no small sacrifices left. Only those that were worse than any job she could find. Outside, she logs off. The sun embraces her entirely. Observed online, 2020s. Kellan Jansen's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Expat Press, BULL, and Frazzled Lit.

If you’ve never traveled through the American Southwest, it really is a place that looks like an alien landscape. Two years ago, I took a road trip with my husband and son in an RV from northern California down to southern California, across the Tehachapi Pass, into southern Utah, down to the Grand Canyon, and back to California via Barstow. Stretches were the road were flat, dry and barren with Joshua trees spotting the acres as the only plant life while other parts curved through deep, red canyon walls on both sides. For miles much of the drive, we saw little in the way of cities or even towns.   It is this unique setting that is central to Barbara Byar’s new novel “In the Desert,” out from Cowboy Jamboree in March. (Full disclosure, my debut short-story collection “All and Then None of You” was published by Cowboy Jamboree.) Byar is a working-class American writer who has lived in Ireland for more than 25 years, which is about as far from a desert landscapes as one can get with its lush green hills and waterways. But Byar captures the essence of the desert and its desolation with a rich cast of characters that intersect in unpredictable ways, and a story that defies genre. The book is part sci fi, part magic realism, part crime story, part romance and an all-encompassing read that will have readers staying up late into the night to get through one more chapter.   The story opens with Raphael, running, in danger, and readers get little clue as to what or who is after him. We only know he is desperate to get to Jessie, and when he does, we don’t know if this is the end or the beginning. Byar invites us to join Raphael and Jessie on a cold, dry night, through time and space, and back again as she slowly reveals their connection, and an ensemble cast of supporting characters that orbit around them.   The most intriguing throughfare in the story is a mysterious carnival and a magical phone booth. Raphael and Jessie, and their friends, hear stories about it all their lives, and when they are in high school, they stumble upon it without understanding the consequences of it. The concept reminded me of “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern, but with way more grit and darkness mixed in. The vibes of the novel match well with an album I’ve been listening to on repeat for months, Lord Huron’s “Cosmic Selector Vol. 1.” The band’s music tends to be full of woeful longing that matches the mood of Byar’s characters, who are either leaving or being left behind.   Don’t leave this one unread. “In the Desert” will be available from Cowboy Jamboree  (for sale via Amazon) on March 3, 2026.   More about the author: Barbara Byar is a working-class American writer living in Ireland for over 25 years with her two boys and two dogs. Her critically acclaimed, collection of stories:  Some Days Are Better Than Ours   was short-listed for the Saboteur Awards. Her short fiction has been published and prize-listed widely, including Pushcart, Best Small Fictions and Best Microfictions nominations. She was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Irish Short Story of the Year in 2023 and longlisted in 2021. A recipient of an Irish Arts Council Literature Bursary and an Agility Award, she is a Fiction Editor at Variant Literature and Editor of MOTEL from Cowboy Jamboree Press. Her debut novel,  In the Desert  will be published by Cowboy Jamboree Press in March, 2026.

Down and Out with Lady Luck in a Casino Last chip She is both faithful And unfaithful Until proven otherwise. Which risk do you take? Trust her and be wrong, Or doubt her and lose something real? In the end, the gamble, Winning—Keeping, Is about what happens if you lose... What loss can you bear; Everything, Or everything? In My Backyard When a frog realises there’s a world outside the well, it instantly separates itself from the crowd. The crowd only starts looking at it weird when it croaks about what it has seen. And here you are, not only croaking but attempting the climb. Of course nobody relates. But fuck it. The point is getting out, not making them believe you can. Blunt       A rational empiricist with an anti-dogmatic orientation.   Values logic over sentiment, observation over ideology.   Challenges collective delusion and pursues structural truth beneath social fashion.      Don’t ask for my opinion if you’ve already chosen your answer—   Because I will give mine. Just saying The worst kind of sin is Machiavellianism—not for the harm it does to others, but for the desolate truth it reveals about the one who harbour’s it. To cultivate the will to manipulate and control, to plot with cold precision, and yet fail  at it—does not make you less of a sinner. It makes you worse. A failure even in the realm of the damned, A Penumbra of a shadow who can’t even execute the exploitation they’ve so carefully woven. A Joke in the darkness. A loser, not absolved by mercy, but undone by their own incompetence. Not cleansed of sin, Just rendered incapable of it. Still life, a random day There is a crack on my screen. It has been there for days, maybe weeks. I cannot remember when it arrived. I look up from my phone. From the chair near the door To the bed across the room. The Starry Night, a cheap Amazon print, Rests against the carved wooden headboard. It sinks into a scatter of pillows and folded linens. A plush toy lies on its side. A metal bottle leans against an ashtray. The bed carries all of it without complaint. The power cuts out. My battery blinks a warning. This room is not connected to the inverter. I stay upstairs anyway. The electrician rewired something the wrong way. Still, I keep writing. If the words matter, maybe the lights will return. They do. Softly. The room shifts. The water bottle on the bed means I have been thirsty. The old aftertaste is familiar From nights I slept dry and did not bother to fix it. It feels like a small measure of progress That I drink now. The plush octopus I bought for my Lady Sits with its face folded. She loved it because it could show both moods. Happy or sad, depending on how it was turned. Now it is flat and unreadable. I cannot tell which side it wants to be. She is still with me. Only distance keeps her away. She would scold me if she saw it looking like this. I am not sure how it happened. Maybe I pressed it in my sleep. Maybe I never noticed. I could think about the crack on my screen, Trace its beginning, But the truth is simple. I probably tripped. The mundane collects itself. The room continues breathing. Life moves, quietly, whether I do or not. I Learned It From a Song Shoot me down, then soothe me with that soft little “sorry, honey” and expect me to wake up. But I did wake up. I woke up hard. Reality stung clean through. Lies tasted sweet for a while, but sweetness spoils. It wears off. It shows its rot. We fight, we make up, and I pretend it is repair. But underneath it sits this sly stack of stored poisons, all those quiet insults and hidden intentions you think I do not see. Trust is fragile. Once it cracks, it never sets right again. Fix what? The issue? Not the issue. The pattern. You are dependent on it. An addict of your own loosened values, a slattern for the chaos you create. Mayhem. A loose cannon. A bruised woman who drifts emotionally, selfish and crude. A broken clock pretending it still keeps time. All talk, no movement. A rude truth choking me until I cannot even pretend to reason with it. You can only delude. “Sorry for messing up.” Messing up? No. These are not accidents. This is choice. Shoot me down and whisper sorry again, and ask if I will wake up. Do you really need clues? Make up what? The ugly? It lives in the marrow. Ingrained. We can fight, and we can make up, but you snapped the link in the chain. That link was everything. I have never been unhappier. Thank you for showing me the peak of what I never want again. I am not even sad. It was expected. I think I smelled the truth a long time ago. It reeked. Creativity, practice, identity. Fuck. P.S. Art, I am over you. Yours, Artist Kamki is a writer from Arunachal Pradesh, India. Drawn to the strange intersections between humor, doubt, and quiet revelation, he writes about the absurdities that shape everyday life. His work has been accepted by Metapsychosis Journal.

Retrograde  Philip’s parents are away. He stares at the clouds that hang sullen on the horizon, stomach clenching when he remembers Jenny’s words. Her clarity that it’s not up to him. To console himself, he calls his buddies who bring booze, offer sympathy spiked with awe.  Wow. That’s rough, dude. I feel you.  Philip pictures Jenny at home throwing up, thinks he might too. He remembers her soft breasts against his chest, how they studied together for the SATs, but Jenny beat him by three-hundred points. He downs tequila shots, the world whirling around him, wills it to somehow spin backwards. Up in the Air She was packing her hacky sacks. He was readying his devil-sticks.  Not bad!  he declared, bedroom eyes beckoning. She shivered with anticipation when he juggled jagged daggers, invited her for pizza in the park, twirled her like Ginger Rogers. She swooned when he swore he’d never tire of watching her, but when she lobbed lemons while maneuvering her unicycle, he frowned, launched flaming torches from atop his assistant’s shoulders, pythons circling his collarbone. When he arrived on stilts, a woman on each arm, tossing them sky high, she pedaled off to parts unknown before he could start juggling her heart. Kathryn Silver-Hajo’s work appears in Atticus Review, Centaur Lit, CRAFT, Emerge Literary, Ghost Parachute, Gone Lawn, Milk Candy Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, Ruby Literary, The McNeese Review, The Phare,and other lovely journals. Her stories were selected for the 2023, 2024, and 2025 Wigleaf Top 50 Longlists and nominated for Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and Best American Food Writing. Kathryn’s award-winning books include flash collection, Wolfsong, and YA novel, Roots of The Banyan Tree. More at: kathrynsilverhajo.com ; facebook.com/kathryn.silverhajo ; twitter.com/KSilverHajo ; @ kathrynsilverhajo.bsky.social ; instagram.com/kathrynsilverhajo

My Divorce from the Indian Gods When I moved to America, I filed for divine divorce. Irreconcilable differences: they wanted daily prayers, I wanted free speech and self-reliance. We separated amicably. I kept the spices and yoga, they kept the festivals. They got custody of my mother. I got a job, a visa, and a mild identity crisis. And suffering—turns out I did like the colors, the clothes, the music—but I threw out those babies with the god water. For sixteen years we didn’t speak. I ignored their friend requests, unsubscribed from Diwali. Ganesha probably blocked me. Kali rolled her eyes and said, “She’ll crawl back after capitalism.” And she was right. Because one morning, I caught a glimpse of cricket on TV— men in white, grass so green it hurt. Something in me stirred, a muscle memory of school fields where girls were told to sit this one out. I wasn’t mad at the gods, I realize now, just at the men who used them as referees for obedience. Later that week in yoga class, half-heartedly attempting Warrior Pose, I heard the instructor chant Om— Grandma’s familiar closing Om back at home. I smiled, and so, I swear, did they. That evening I lit a candle. “All right,” I said, “let’s talk. ”The gods laughed. “We were never patriarchy, — you just lumped us in with the board of directors. ”We all laughed then— it sounded suspiciously like forgiveness. We met for chai, talked about our differences. They admitted they’d never been mad— just giving me space. I said I was sorry for assuming the gods were as petty as men. We’re remarried now. Open  relationship. They get Sundays and incense. I keep free will, occasional enlightenment, and see other gods too. Mutton Chops Don’t mock my mutton chops. Us  daughters of hairy men let our faces be adorned by these luscious locks. What if we don’t care about unconventional facial hair? Why does your masculinity so easily scare? I owe no duty to your standard of beauty. Call  me eccentric, call me snooty — I’ll wear, with all my grace, this ancestrally inherited lace. Let the sunshine fall upon my fuzzy face — it shall adorn just the same. Humble Pie Before life's end, be sure to try A slice of humble pie, oh my! Your favorite flavor, you won't deny So delectable, you'll sigh Maybe even shed a tear and cry   Topped with buttery crumbles, sweet and light Made of bits of your ego fumbled in life's fight The topping is crunchy, like your hard-fought wins Coats the tongue with the taste your highs and sins   The filling, truly thrilling Eat it slow, God willing You may taste notes of healing Of caramelized wisdom, dreams burned   Of Loves lost, hopes spurned Balanced by windfalls and tables turned A hint of gratitude A pinch of good attitude And that creamy dreamy texture you savor Made by frothing hope that against all odds didn’t waver   Let’s not forget the crust so fine Your unkept promises holding it in line Light and flaky Falls apart, like your intentions shaky Delightfully browned and scorched on the sides Torched with feelings you tried to but couldn’t eventually hide   Humble pie looks and smells divine Cooks only in perfect time In the oven of your heart Fueled by your spirit, only you can get it to jump start This oven sparkles, burning bright Magic humble pie cooks on its own, glowing in its own light Everything about humble pie is just right New Age Romance In fishy waters off the west coast, Where ocean life thrives the most A shy dolphin, her name was Grace  She had the cutest happy dolphin face After a productive feeding dive She noticed annoying sharks arrive One handsome shark, caught her eye  Shiny and dark, swimming sexy and sly. She thought, “Dolphin’s smile, sharks grin Dolphins are nice, deadly, sharks live in sin  Could there ever be a spark? Between a dolphin and a shark I like the sun, he swims in the dark…” California's waters, a paradise grand To stay here a while, she had planned Yet, Mr. Shark was always near Smiling at her, menacing but sincere Gliding effortlessly, muscular and toned, Was he seeking her when she was alone In a fight, dolphins stand strong, She could take him, it wouldn’t even take long Approaching boldly, she said hello “How come you’re there wherever I go” Mr. Shark looked surprised, and not at all mean Amicably introduced himself as Tiger Finn Finn excitedly said  “You’re the most spectacular Dolphin Scratch that, spectacular being I’ve ever seen, I see you don’t have a mate, I think it’s my fate To take you out on delightful romantic date I’ll show you all my favorite spots I like that you snort air, a lot! I wish I could breathe too But I’ll happily just watch you! Together, we’ll feast on some amazing fish! Polar Mackerels and sardines, Yumm! De-lish Have you been to the coral reefs? It’s beautiful beyond belief Have you swum around shipwrecks? Such hauntingly eerie spots to neck..” Ms. Dolphin blushed a deeper shade of tan Had she finally met her man? No one made her feel this way Tongue tied; she didn’t know what to say… “Hi, my name is Amazing Grace I’m feisty, don’t be fooled by the face We are not supposed to mate But who am I to stop fate? You’re hot, so why not!  I’ve been swimming solo a lot I like your toothy smile And it’s really been a while… There’s no rule, against a pairing so cool We’re in the ocean, not a segregated swimming pool Creatures who judge us, let’s pity the fools Would you show me the sights you know? I have a good feeling, so on these dates I’ll go I can’t have your child But I can be sexy and wild And that’s worth something, right?” And then at first light They swam towards the titanic  And indulged in passion manic Pent up love and lust, it felt so good!  A dolphin and a shark totally should! A Mother–Daughter Tartare Pieces of my difficult dead mother, our twisted love — an eternal bother. But I had only her, no other. Oh mother! Dead mother. Mother, our love wasn’t whole. You  let child-me see your ugly soul. Our love was real — painfully so. What should a hurt child know? A woman deals. I remember the good pieces, more and more as my being releases. The cruel ones I put away, to be perused another day. But all our pieces don’t fit. This broken puzzle will never complete. Our story will never be neat, but rest assured, I won’t repeat this tragic, cannibalistic love for a child. My  love will be kind and mild — tempered — a gentle breeze to your tornado. And maybe one day I too will grow some new roots that better suit. Goodbye and farewell, mother. There will never be another beautiful and cruel love like you. What’s a grown woman to do? Rest in peace.I hope I can still release my old wounds, exhumed once more by your death. Why waste more breath keeping score? I pray you haunt me no more. Mother India: The Chip on My Shoulder and the Thorns in My Crown Don’t you dare tell me I’m not India’s. Yes — I speak your tongue, wear your clothes. Yes — I don’t conform to whatever image you hold of Indian women. You , sir, know nothing about us. You think I’m progressive, modern, a woman with a backbone, a feminist — that I speak my mind. Do  you think I became this way just by showing up here — learning the ways of your people? That your country “saved” me? That I am special? I was forged back home. Yes, India is cruel sometimes — especially to her daughters. India is a tough mother, never shielding her children from the cold, hard truth. But she is my mother, and the only mother I will ever have. She taught me well — about this world and those who run it. She taught me what I lack, and taught me to persevere. She taught me to keep pushing even when it’s easy to give up. She taught me she doesn’t care where I live, or whose flag is on my passport — she just wants me to thrive. She’s not a jealous, possessive mother. In fact, she trained me for this very moment. She trained me to survive,to grow a skin so thick and a mind so sharp that nothing fazes me. She trained me to seize my opportunities and live out my choices. She taught me the value of what she never had. She let me feel her sorrows and misfortunes, and burn with purpose. She raises millions like me — millions hungry for her redemption, millions who call her mother, who are proud of her even though they know the world thinks she’s puzzling — a post-colonial, third-first-world yoga land, sprouting STEM employees and exotic spiritual mumbo-jumbo, poverty porn with grand food. Good. She knows her daughters will grow up one day. No  matter where they live, they will remember. They may not shout it from rooftops, but she’s there — like a hug for those she was kind to, and like a chip on the shoulder of those she wasn’t. She knows she couldn’t be everything to everyone. Broken Roots Chasing the glamorous unknown, far away from home, yielded impressive fruits One half the ones I wanted, ripe and juicy, scented with delicious possibilities The other, rotten, unwanted, spoiled, and moldy, decaying with a putrid smell My tree, diseased from not really belonging here, with its broken foreign roots My tree of life is corpulent, stable thick trunk, heavy bosom of glossy green leaves Sheltering me with opulence, makings of a wonderful life, high achieving and free But sadly, the mysterious disease spreads underground and manifests in sick fruit Roots that won’t take what this land gives without a fuss, my tree of life grieves No cure for this, for a grown tree can’t be moved easily, it was displaced long ago When it was but a young sapling, softer, malleable – driven to thrive against all odds Parched roots gratefully drinking unfamiliar nourishment, it forgot it was a tree Thought it was a rolling stone, now it seeks its home, cries for there is nowhere to go The roots have rebelled against this land that gives, but also takes in unequal measure I can turn a blind eye, unfeelingly accept compromise, but my tree can’t lie to itself Leaves whisper hard feelings, from prejudiced dealings, they know they don’t have a voice “I can bear you fruit, from which a new sapling would shoot, but it wouldn’t have a choice  It wouldn’t belong, So - I will slowly perish. I no longer cherish these foreign pleasures”. The Tree Butterfly She doesn’t hover at every bloom— some sweetnesses shine, but sour too soon. She waits where blossoms brave the breeze and sips pretty whispers high on trembling trees. She’s not here to compete with bees, their frantic work, their colonies. She drinks with grace, doesn’t overindulge; her thirst refined, her senses culled. Not every nectar earns her flight; she tests the air, she tastes the light. Above the meadow’s easy charms, she feeds from risk, from lofty arms. Her love’s not hunger, but design— selective, sacred, self-aligned. Even longing learns to climb; even choice can be divine. Shades of Belonging Back at birth home, where the sunshine remembers my face, where the colors shine so bright, where familiar, long-lost spices set my tongue ablaze— so many heartfelt delights! However, if I had to choose freely, the part of my trip that heals my immigrant blues is that upon my return, I am finally among thousands with that matching golden hue. Back at chosen home in my white-washed life, I cannot help but scan every space I’m in for anyone with a kindred tan. I don’t wish to befriend— just to understand. My impromptu demographic surveys remind me— I’m not part of this land. Here’s the catch: you can have a passport, but never truly belong if the face you wear doesn’t match the song. Cry Me a Philadelphia River Philadelphia, my city, has not one but two rivers— a mother and her child. I favor the mother’s banks; at the Delaware waterfront I pray, contemplate, say my thanks. At the Schuylkill—her child— I am a child: I eat, I run, I catch sunsets. I’ve only called Philly home in recent years, but the two rivers help me forget that I am not really from here. Sometimes I sit quietly at the Delaware’s edge and think of things this river has seen: a country’s birth, a people’s death, ships, mills, bridges, towns, and cities— all a blip to her. She’s on a different timeline, a different plane of existence. Perhaps that one makes more sense. I ponder river immortality and my kinship with the thousands before me who have sat somewhere like here, with her and her child. Whether we were hurting or not, she has comforted us along this Philadelphia mile. A river always knows where she goes— and I, I don’t even know about tomorrow. I try to be more grounded, and I find it’s easiest to do not just on the ground, by trees with my feet in grass, but by a river— this river. At the Delaware waterfront— a thousand books I’ve read, fifteen years, so many skins I’ve shed, journal entries till my feelings bled out into her. Pretty thoughts, shitty thoughts— here I river-watch, people-watch, sky-watch, connect the dots between my flow, her flow, the cosmic flow of energy and all this synergy I get to enjoy: the Delaware River’s sexy moonlit glow, her daily fiery orange sunshow. These always move me— these are truly free. And as I sit,I imagine she’s flowing through me, and suddenly I am the Delaware. Life  just is— it’s neither fair nor unfair. I relax, bit by bit, at this man-made pier, thinking about my year in a city held by two rivers. I am, very much, a believer in the magic of water. Despite all its terrestrial commotion, Philadelphia is held by the ocean. Even far from shore— and there’s so much more to timeless rivers, eternal givers. We do nothing to preserve them. We do not deserve them. Shreya Datta is a poet whose work has appeared in Lighten Up Online, Rue Scribe, Poets Choice, Wingless Dreamer Press, and Moonstone Press. Born in India and based in the United States, she writes about diaspora, femininity, myth, food, and the small rebellions that make a life.

Glossy acrylic latex paint Glossy acrylic latex paint. Oil-based primer.  Glossy acrylic latex paint. Oil-based primer.  I say this twice more driving into Dove Meadow Retail Complex. No way I’m going to get mugged off by the guy in Paint Passion or, more importantly, let him know I’m the type of person that doesn’t know anything about paints and, ergo, am not very handy or outdoorsy and probably just some soft-fingered digital nomad that writes marketing copy all day. Which I’m not. I have eczema. I sometimes wear gloves to hide it, but even on this balmy November afternoon, I’m gloveless. Rough skin out, calloused and proud. Really authenticates my workwear get-up.  I pull up my Prius alongside a white van outside Tool Planet. I swap my Birkenstocks for Caterpillars and light a ciggie. Three tokes are enough for the odour to stick to my fingers and chore jacket, which I got second-hand when I was in Philly, so yeah, bonafide Rust Belt. Unlike Freddie’s. I know he buys his Carhartt at Flex. I wiggle my jaw in the car mirror and rough up my beard.  Glossy acrylic latex paint. Oil-based primer.  Glossy acrylic latex paint. Oil-based primer.  I stroll, workmanlike, from Tool Planet to Cooper’s Wires to Paint Passion. The sliding doors part and I’m confronted with my first unexpected challenge: tins.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I expected Paint Passion to sell paint tins - that’s why I’m here - but I didn’t think every paint tin would look like, literally, identical. You can’t even differentiate by brand or colour or — I feel a clammy drip under my trucker cap. I didn't check what size I needed. All these tins are like small barrels. Do I really need that much paint to turn some gourds into Christmas decorations? I doubt it. But I can’t ask now can I? Would blow my cover. ChatGPT said wood and gourd paint were very similar, so if the store assistant asks, I’m painting an old bench. Much more…what’s the word? Workmanlike. Yeah.  Despite my confusion, I don’t hover around the entryway like some confused non-painty white-collar dufus. I make a beeline for Aisle One. I want to show the store assistant that I’m in a hurry. A got-to-get-to-the-next-job-stat kinda hurry. In Aisle One, I start reading words I sort of know but also sort of don’t - matte, silk, sheen, eggshell - until the dark blue uniform comes into view. Bogey at high noon. He’s scrawnier than the pot bellied, old-timer with greased hair and working class accent that I imagined, which makes him even more terrifying. He’s a contemporary. That’s a whole new level of judgment.  His name tag says Marc. He smiles with smoker’s teeth that, ironically, could do with a lick of paint.  ‘Y’alright mate, where’s your glossy acrylic latex? Swear it used to be ‘ere.’ I say, a bit too quickly.  ‘Glossy acrylic latex?’ Marc says. He’s just had a coffee; his breath engulfs me.  ‘Yeah, oil-based,’ I say.  ‘How much do you need?’ ‘Nuff for this old bench I’m doin’ up.’ I arrange my face into a practiced tut. ‘The stuff people throw away these days, eh?’ Marc looks at me weirdly. I realise that line was set up for the pot-bellied old-timer greaseball as a way of building camaraderie and not for a contemporary, with bad teeth, bad breath, and actually, really nice skin.  I roll up my sleeves and crack my wrists, performatively.  ‘What’s the bench made out of?’ Marc says.  ‘Wood.’ ‘What type of wood?’  For some reason, the only words I can think of are varnished and timber. ‘Oak’, I say.  ‘You sure you want glossy acrylic latex paint with an oil-based primer?’ Marc says. I shrug like an Italian. ‘Sure, it’s got the durability and weather-resistance for most woods, but for oak, I’d go chalk-based. Nice matte finish. Outdoor bench, I take it?’ Our Christmas tree will be 100% indoors, in the corner of my and Tilly’s one-bed. Right where Peanut, our cockapoo, sleeps. I haven’t told Tilly yet, but I’m going to paint Peanut’s face on my gourd decorations when we do them this weekend. She’ll love that.  ‘Yeah, outdoor, but a bit indoor too,’ I say. ‘Like on a porch. You know, outdoor, but covered.’ He studies my face. ‘Near my shed,’ I lie.  ‘Right, well acrylic latex paint is better when exposed to the elements,’ Marc says. ‘Doesn't fade, crack, quick drying, all this you know.’  I suppress my smirk with sincere, workmanlike nodding. ‘Yeah, yeah. I used it for my shed.’ ‘Honestly, though, if I were you, the chalk-based paint would look nicer and do a decent protection job if it’s sheltered from the worst of the elements.’ I think of our little tree sheltered between the bookcase and the ottoman.  ‘Yeah, it will be,’ I say. ‘Alright, chalk it is.’ Marc nods. I follow him wordlessly to Aisle Five, feeling like I’m not just getting away with it, but nailing it. I can't wait to rub it in Freddie’s face. Not literally, obviously, it’s just Freddie bangs about those gardening tools he inherited from his grandpa’s estate as if he were Alan fucking Titchmarsh. And don’t even get me started on Tim’s motorcycle chat. One year he had that Vespa and now he’s constantly saying words like carburetor, alternator and fork leaks like a regular greasemonkey.  Marc crouches down on his haunches. I join him. A handy man’s squat.  ‘This,’ he says, holding a can the size of a baby, ‘is our new range from Morris & Macpherson - so you know, good paints.’ Sounds a bit fancy for my liking - no Granocryl or Hammerite I’d seen earlier - but I nod anyway.  ‘What colour are you after?’ Marc asks.  Peanut is liver-coloured. But I need some white for the background and obviously some red and green for the general festive vibe like we saw at the Tulleybridge Christmas Market. ‘Well, I’ve actually got quite a few jobs comin’ up, all oak, so maybe I'll getta couple. Brown, green, red, white, that sorta thing.’ ‘Sure,’ he says. He gets four tins. Cafe Luxe, Scandinavian Forest, Emperor’s Silk and Portland Pebble.  They all sound a bit interior for my liking. I bet Granocryl and Hammerite’s paints are called something more simple and workmanlike: Bear, Grass, Blood, Stone.  I inspect the one litre tin of Cafe Luxe. £26.50. I scratch my hands to show off my callouses.  ‘Ok, I’ll ‘ave a think.’ I think that over £100 seems quite a lot for a few gourd decorations. ‘Thanks’, I add pointedly, so he leaves.  I keep an eye on Marc in my peripheries. As soon as he turns out the aisle, I check ChatGPT. Turns out, I can buy a small set of multiple-paint colours in mini-pots at the arts and crafts store near our apartment. £10 all in. And ‘perfect for gourds’. Yay.  I stand up. Marc is loitering around the corner of the aisle, no doubt waiting to mug my attention.  We catch eyes. ‘Looks good,’ I say, ‘but I’m gonna ‘ave a think. Need to cost it up, you know.’  He nod-shrugs. I nod-shrug back. Then strut out the store workmanlike.   Confessions of a Club Toilet So they play this song, yeah, in the club I work at. It’s all about shaking that booty and there’s this line yeah, which goes: ‘I get mo’ ass than a toilet seat’.  And I’m always like: doubt it, bruv. And I’d know, being a toilet seat and all.  To be fair, I’m a club toilet, in the men's, so most ass tryta avoid me. If I wrote a rap, the lyric would go: ‘I get mo’ pees than fish and chips’. Na’ mean? I get puke too. Vom normally in the bowl tho. And my lid is coke central. The crowd in this joint obviously never heard of keys - why would you snort anything off a toilet?  But I don’t mind. Snorters are way better than the sprinklers, sprayers and shitters.  And I’ve got it lucky. I only work weekend evenings. I got mates in offices workin’ the reverse 5:2. And those poor bowls at train stations: 7 day shifts, 18 hours per day. No fuckin’ way bruv.  That’s not right. We need a union or someink. Or at least more attendants. My first club had this guy, right, had some kind of speech impediment or whatever as he was always saying these rhymes like ‘no spray, no lay’. ‘No splash, no gash.’ ‘No Armani, no poonani’.  Weird bloke. Sold lollies. In a toilet.  Should have sold funnels. Men in that club would just sway and spay all over me like they was waterin’ plants in a drought.  But, gotta hand it to ‘im, it never smelled that bad in there and it was all over by 3am.  Unlike this one gig I had. Big club, big toilets. Me and five others. 12-hour shifts, 10 til 10. Music growled non-stop. Bass honestly shook my cistern, man. Serious. But that’s pretty much the only thing that did. Hardly anyone peed. I remember this one guy, right, standin’ with his shrunken knob out, yeah, eyes wide, speakin’ to himself, willin’ himself to pee. 30 minutes he waited.  I do remember a coupla gross shits and vomits, but mostly the men in those big clubs come in, unzip, get a bag out, snort, and flush an empty bowl. Which I don’t mind, cos it feels like gargling innit. Funny tho. When I think bout it. I’ve been slept on, I’ve been fucked on, I’ve been drawn on, I’ve been flyered on, but I wouldn’t change it. You learn a lot of weird-ass shit in toilets. And one day, we’ll rise up and shit on you. Beetle is a UK-based copywriter with a weird name. When he’s not writing words for other people, he likes to write weird, funny and dark short stories - mostly about everyday people in unusual situations or unusual people in everyday situations.

Thirty years ago, my best friend John died. In his honour and in my fog of grief, I rescued a beautiful mutt puppy in Montreal, the city where he died. I named her Zoey, Greek for "life". Wanting to be the most excellent of good mummies but having very little money, I found a wee guest house in Los Angeles for the two of us. The structure was more shack than house but, oh, the yard! It was huge, and anchored by an extraordinary orange tree that perfumed my Spring evenings with the most delicate, elegant scent. And every Christmas, those sexy, succulent oranges, finally ripe for the picking, graced my holiday table.  The clay-packed soil in the yard was a bitch to work with but I managed. I scoured Freecycle and Craigslist for free plants and was amazed by my good fortune. However, it meant digging up seven rose bushes on a particularly blisteringly hot California afternoon (in The Valley, no less), and hauling enormous aloe bushes in the trunk of my sedan, careful to travel down back alleys and side streets because my trunk was too full to close and I was afraid the police might stop me. Eventually, I rescued three more beautiful mutt puppies and, of course, they rode along, air conditioner blasting, so there was simply no room for the plants inside the car.  We did this for years. And years. And years. Over time, through dint of hard work, love for my babies, and my complete adoration of all things "nature", I had created Eden. My Eden. My perfect, happy place. Just me, my dogs, my oranges and roses, and a honeysuckle vine right outside my bedroom window where, late one evening while gathered around my outdoor fire pit, both of us high on hash, a friend taught me how to gently suck the nectar from the blossom. It was one of the most sensual experiences I think I've ever had. I also adored my scarlet trumpet vines that looped through the hurricane fence, the orange and yellow canna lilies that, once rooted, miraculously spread themselves out along the side of my neighbor's periwinkle garage. The verboten but glorious giant bamboo stalks that snaked from under my neighbor's fence, providing the perfect green privacy screen.  Oh, and tea. Always, always a cup of bancha tea. Oftentimes, I'd find myself singing Cohen's lyrics from "Suzanne" as I indulged in tea and oranges - though mine didn't come all the way from China. At night, my dogs, Zoey, Liam, Kipp and True, would sit on the lawn furniture and watch for possums scooting along the telephone wires while I'd lie flat on my back on the patio, gazing at the stars.   Did I mention the birds? Dammit, it was a 24-hour assault! God knows what species were chirping away during the day but all night long there was always a lone Mockingbird that refused to sleep. He'd only stop his racket when a Mourning Dove cooed just before dawn broke. Eventually, thankfully, the bird noise became the adorable soundscape of my day, soothing my nerves left frazzled by weekdays spent at jobs I loathed. My dogs, my garden, my Eden, became like a smooth rock I'd pop in my pocket for comfort and touch periodically throughout the day to remind myself that I was a soul of nature, not a cog in the wheel of corporate America bleeding my days away in an airless cubicle.  But time passes. And, as the Buddhists annoyingly insist, everything changes, nothing remains the same and so....and so. And so Zoey died in 2010. And I became sick in 2011. Liam died in 2014. I could no longer work. I lost my Eden,and moved back to Toronto. Grateful, of course, but wounded beyond belief. I fear sometimes, beyond repair. Kipp passed in 2018 and now, my last little man, True, passed three weeks ago. I have a small, rent-controlled apartment with a view from my front windows of a huge brick building. I'm right downtown. Folks tell me they'd kill to live so centrally located in The St. Lawrence Market area. Farmer's markets every day, an antique market every weekend, outdoor bands, local streets closed off to traffic so pedestrians can lounge among the picnic benches strategically placed along the cobblestone streets so folks can eat their local goodies while they ‘people watch’. Today, they were giving away free ice cream on Market Street.  Yet my heart is broken. My babies are all gone, my Eden is no more, and I'm desolate and despairing - no amount of free ice cream or cobblestone streets is going to change that.  I know I'm not unique in this. I know we've all been touched by loss, change, and disappointment. However,  I'm not resilient. I'm not a "bounce back" kinda gal. On the contrary, I'm more of a shatter-at-the-slightest-bump-in-the-road kinda gal. I know it has a lot to do with my childhood. And, again, I know I'm not unique in this. But, hey, I have some major abandonment issues that, despite my best efforts, have failed to resolve or heal. My  mother left us for a new life and moved far across the country when I was a young adolescent and we never talked about it. We simply weren't allowed to.  Across the country eventually became out of the country, determined as she was to wash her hands of us completely.   My father decided that he, too, needed to escape the responsibilities of child rearing, so he took that summer off - and every subsequent summer - to tour Europe on his own. Winters he spent skiing...somewhere. I'm sure he must have told us where but I can no longer recall, it's all a haze.  My father's presence in the house was so remote that I referred to him as That Man.  That Man who remained barricaded behind his newspaper when I stood at his knee, age six, trying desperately to impress him with my nascent reading ability.  That Man who gave me Valium when my mother left because talking to me was too intimate.  That Man who, when I left home at 17 and my brother asked him if he missed me, replied, "Out of sight, out of mind".  And you know, we didn't talk about any of that, either.  It was as though that's just what parents did - leave; or remain present, yet absent.  That infamous, caustic, WASP repression was the culprit, no doubt, so I didn't make any attempts at Truth and Reconciliation with my parents until I was well into my 20s. And, oh, the Humanity! It was the Hindenburg every time. Epic crash and burn. The response was always absolute denial - or wailing tears. But never compassion or curiosity or contrition. And I mention all of this now, right now, because at this moment I'm really missing my Eden. Without it, life has been pretty fucking stark. Eden - nature, dogs - has been a soothing parent. A respite. A place where I feel understood and connected. A soft place to land. A friend recently gave me the beautiful gift of a visit to her palatial treehouse of a  cottage, built by her talented partner, tucked away beside a gorgeous lake on Vancouver Island. We had a wonderful two weeks whale watching, drinking apple cider, loving on her five dogs (thank you, Rollo, for the morning kisses), admiring her dahlias and daisies, playing Yahtzee and smoking wicked marijuana. They were terrific hosts and so patient with my grief. But I've come home to True's ashes in a burlap bag on my dining room table, his bed untouched, and a living room littered with heartfelt sympathy cards and a plethora of my snotty tissues.  I just can't stop crying. I'm writing about it all here and now because, if I don't, I'll scream. I'll lose my mind. I'll fall off the edge of the earth. Hold your fur babies close tonight. Nourish those gorgeous flowers in your garden. Never abandon your children. And rest in the knowledge that nature heals. It's alive, its pulse mirrors our heartbeats because we belong to each other. Erin started acting professionally as a young adolescent, only recently discovering the profound relief and release of writing her own stories.  She lives in Toronto.

Two days before my twenty-first birthday, I emailed my father after nearly a decade. The last I’d heard of him, he was in Nepal, to which my mother scoffed that he’d rather take care of a couple of monks than his daughter. I said, Ammi , I said that she couldn’t say that. Someone could hear, Ammi . I wish he had heard. I am bitter and I stalk his Flickr photos and see him ringing a Tibetan singing bowl and I wish my mother’s words rang in his ears like he was getting hazed at a Berkeley frat. My mom will always say what I will think and I will always chastise her for it. I am so bitter and I am only twenty-one. I emailed him nothing but a YouTube  link to Shakira’s Chantaje . Sent from my iPhone. It’s the only song by  Shakira that my mom does zumba to. One, two, three. One, two, three. One I’m bridging these, two divorced souls together in the catastrophe claustrophobic cubicle of an email is what I am doing, three. Nobody is doing it like me. I am twenty-one with grey hairs sprouting already, but they love Shakira and they love me. So he will be so ecstatic to have heard from his daughter that he hasn’t seen since she was eleven and wore velcro Twinkle-Toes.  He was not.  I am ravenously buying subpar sourdough at Safeway and gawk at his nascent response and laugh extremely loudly and tongue my cheek neurotically. I say fuck the subpar sourdough and I say, wow. I say Baba ’s lost his hair but not his humor! I sugarcoat it. If he sees no need to sugarcoat what cannot be taken with a grain of salt, then I will. I defy him. I rebuke him! He says, Shreya, why do you care so much now if you did not then? I think, true. I get a kind of Catholic guilt over an apathetic amateur me who could not tie her shoes and hid beneath velcro straps. I get a sort of sick swell in the pit of my stomach over my Flickr slideshow that plays back all the moments where I did not care. Chantaje  by Shakira plays in the background and the  slideshow stops when I learned to ride a bike without my trainer wheels.  He wasn’t there when I learned how. My neighbor’s dad taught me his children were only babies. I feel like I’m in debt for the use of  their father before they could. I feel like I’m in debt all the time. I feel like I’m in debt to the sink for cooking a meal so when I make pasta, I’ll steer clear of the strainer. I use a fork and then reuse it to eat. Less things to clean. Less things to pay back.  Nor was my father there when I realized that the world is much bigger than Wisconsin. And for the sake of my good conscience, I ought to keep up with the current global events! I ought to know the affairs of small-c communist China, what yams to eat to prevent male pattern baldness, and why my dad only came home on Fridays for an hour.  He would sit in the room in the basement and I thought the basement was dark and cold and I was scared but I lied and said I would not go down because I did not care so I did not know what he liked. Caribou Coffee, American Spirits, and Shakira CDs. He did not like opening the blinds in his room, my mother’s side of the family, and when he lost a bet. His fists shook.  The worst part of being honest with myself is that I was the gamble lost that loosened his once usurping hands. The worst thing about being honest with you is that I loved the pity. I loved it like I was Carrie Bradshaw. I loved it like a new pair of shoes.  Even before the divorce, my mom enrolled the both of us in a recovery support group that met on Sundays on top of the Wells Fargo she worked at. A co-worker recommended it! Co-workers love recommending. And the other divorced moms all had a smoker’s patronizing nonchalance about them that I look for in all of my crushes now. I see a smoker on Hinge and I go, oh yeah. The kids and the grown-ups were segregated and we had to craft grief wands to wave and I thought, oh yeah. I’m going to wave my wand so hard and will my parents back together. This arranged marriage is going to be rearranged. But before that, I’m going to charm one of these ladies into pinching my cheeks and asking how old I am. Yes ma’am, I am so young and darling and none of my toys are scribbled on. I keep my Barbies’ clothes on and I eat my vegetables and only throw away my bananas. My teachers still call me a bright young girl and I’m not troubled. I never even liked him that much anyway. Surely, my mom is my whole world and I’m thankful for the distance. I’m going to make them all love me. I have the best fucking grief wand in Wells Fargo. My grief wand was an invalid and my mother pretends there was no floor on top of Wells Fargo. I am curious in a spiteful manner and I pick at the scabs on my scalp until the blood cakes and I ask her where my wand wafted off to then. I am too bitter and her birthday is next week. I am too bitter and I did not reply to his email. He did not follow up and I am not a follower, not even of God. I spend all my time battering my bitterness that I do not know what my mom likes now either. Swatches, God, and intermittent fasting. She does not  like when I forget to call, living in an apartment, and failure. I fail to call and I live in an apartment and I am sorry. She would like to get back with my dad.  Nice.  What if this was said when we all lived together? When the fire station was across the street from our house, and the firefighters could douse away the burning soot of their affairs. They could tell him to put out his cigarette. It’s a hazard, they would say and then I would say, whatever you say, beautiful. I love firefighters. We could get Caribou coffee and… But what if nothing was said at all? I wish she had said nothing at all. I wish she hated him so much that the thought of his voice crumbled impenetrable objects to shards in her soft little fist. No, on the ground. I don’t want to hurt her. Sometimes I wish she hated him so much that she couldn’t stand to look at me. ‘Get!’ , she would say and ‘Go!’, I would, happily. I would do anything for her. I would look to the sun for every waking moment of my life to prune my eyes, his eyes, from her.  I want to get her a Tibetan singing bowl for her birthday. I’m not cruel. This isn’t a callback to my dad’s Flickr. She likes to pray and I like to pretend. She likes to play the Tibetan singing bowl at the holistic shop with the welcome mat urging us to Namastay Here. And here I smudge my dirty, filthy, no-good runner’s feet for longer than needed until the white shopkeeper stares. I have my dad’s feet. Size twelve and the wide kind that makes me need Doctor Scholls’ and Clarks’ and to give away my kitten heels from Steve Madden because they are a lowballed size nine from Depop. We take up so much space, my dad and I. We deserve a discount, I joke, but Ammi does not hear. I am so bitter and she just plays and I play pretend. Shreya Dharavath is a Wisconsinite transplant in California, studying politics and hating politics and just trying her best. Her work focuses on the bittersweetness of missing those one lets go of first.